Residents say the city tore down a home-made dam, creating flood conditions during rains and thaws. (CBS)
Reporting Mike Parker
DOLTON, Ill. (CBS) — It’s a problem people living in Dolton say they’ve been dealing with for years: continued flooding, nearly every time there’s heavy rain.
In this neighborhood, they’ve been pumping flood water out of basements for days. Their backyards are flooded with two feet of melting snow and ice.
It’s been happening every year for nearly a decade along East 138th Street. They’ve complained to the village for a decade.
“We pay our taxes. We can’t even enjoy the back yards,” one resident, Rodney Hewitt, tells CBS 2′s Mike Parker.
Two years ago, Hewitt and his neighbor, Jerome Williams, rented a Bobcat for $750 and built a 4-foot-high dam behind their property and the flooding stopped. They say the village came and destroyed it last summer.
Now, the floods are back, and 85-year-old Annabelle Volling can’t get her car out of the flood waters to do her shopping.
“When are they going to do something about it?” she says.
Dolton Mayor Ronnie Lewis did not return phone calls. But the village issued a statement, promising to send engineers to the area to see what, if anything, can be done.
